Child safety and abuse prevention are issues of Great Commission significance. If our goal is to make disciples, we must also be good stewards of the precious resources that God has entrusted to us, especially vulnerable image-bearers. Unfortunately, abuse is a problem in our culture from which the church is not exempt. The good news is that there are steps that ministry leaders can take to protect children under their care. Sessions in this topic would cover the basics of creating a child protection program at your church including appropriate screening measures, children’s worker training, and response plans. Creating a child protection program can feel like a daunting task, but ministry leaders should leave this type of session with resources and simple, actionable steps to get started.

1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. What can Christians do to change these disturbing facts? What can parents do to prepare their kids to live in our fallen world? Christians must lead the way in prevention and response measures to keep kids safe and to respond with the hope of the gospel, become aware of this issue, and equip their children to recognize, respond, and report immoral behavior from an adult.

Sessions in the topic will help parents and caregivers to have wisdom and discernment in parenting, and will teach them how to have age-appropriate conversations with their kids about abuse and threats.

These sessions are primarily intended for parents, grandparents, and caregivers, but ministry leaders and pastors would benefit as well.

Screening is a vital element of your protection measures to safeguard children, youth, and vulnerable adults. Join us for this screening training to learn about important elements from background and reference checks to verifying government issued photo ID and more. Screening helps keep bad actors away from the vulnerable and sets the tone for safeguarding that gives parents and guardians the confidence they need to allow their kids to participate in our ministry programs. The screening principles provided in this session can easily be transferred to any child/youth serving context. Join Jeff Dalrymple from SBC Executive Committee on this screening best practices for youth safety.  

Architecting Training for Church Leaders

Policies and procedures that exist only in a document no one reads or heeds are not effective to protect the vulnerable. Training your staff and volunteers on your organization’s safeguarding policies, the signs of abuse, and what to do if they witness or learn of abuse taking place either internally or externally, are vital to keeping children in your programming safe. Sessions on this topic are intended for ministry leaders and will give an overview of creating an abuse prevention training for their organization including aspects like explaining the Biblical “why” behind these measures, the role of the Child Safety Coordinator, how screening intersects training, operations, worker abuse awareness training, response procedures.

Frontline Worker Training

Your workers and staff need a working understanding of the indicators of abuse and their reporting responsibilities if they will be supervising children. Sessions in this topic would provide an overview of the information your childcare workers would need to know including an understanding of the problem of abuse, indicators of abuse, common grooming behaviors, safeguarding best practices, mandatory vs permissive reporting, how to receive a disclosure of abuse from a minor, and general principles of responding well. 

Sessions on the topic of grooming would equip church and ministry leaders to understand and confront the reality of grooming with both biblical conviction and informed practice. Grounded in Scripture’s clear call to protect the vulnerable and shepherd God’s people with integrity, the session examines how grooming operates as a deliberate process that exploits trust, authority, and access within ministry contexts. Through an educational lens, leaders are guided to recognize behavioral patterns, environmental risks, and digital dynamics that can precede abuse, while also learning how sound governance, vigilant supervision, and accountable response plans reflect faithful stewardship. By integrating biblical principles with proven prevention standards, training on this topic will affirm that safeguarding children is not merely a legal responsibility, but a core expression of the Church’s pastoral mission and witness.

Security and operational readiness are integral to cultivating a culture of goodness in churches. When leaders approach risk management, child protection, and security ministry operations as acts of stewardship and discipleship, they create environments where the gospel can flourish without distraction. Sessions on this topic will provide practical strategies for embedding safety, preparedness, and operational excellence into ministry practices, ensuring that every process reflects God’s character and supports a church’s mission as a force for good. Through a discipleship-first lens, leaders will learn how readiness and response can serve as tangible expressions of faithfulness, helping ministries steward people, purpose, and trust so that the Gospel continues to go out undisturbed.

Integrating Offenders into the Church

Not every church is called to minister to convicted sex offenders. When churches minister to sex offenders, they must implement a careful grace that is based upon an educated understanding of offenders and how they act. A careful grace starts with putting the needs of children and survivors first. A careful grace embraces the reality that actions must have consequences. A careful grace requires church leaders and workers to be trained in child protection, and our churches to have clear and effective safeguarding policies and procedures. Only within a context of careful grace can churches effectively care for sex offenders.

Offender Care

In abuse response, we are right to prioritize the needs of victims. But churches must also be intentional in caring for offenders. How can we minister to offenders in a way that balances accountability, necessary consequences, and safety concerns with genuine love, aiming at a restoration of their dignity as God’s image-bearers? How do we apply the gospel to those who’ve diminished their own humanity by hurting others? And what practical considerations must we always keep before us? Sessions related to this topic will explore these themes together, providing real help to those caring for offenders.

In a world where ministries face storms both literal and figurative, preparation is not optional- it’s biblical stewardship. Sessions on this topic will help attendees discover practical steps to identify and address their ministry’s greatest vulnerabilities, learn how to apply tools of risk management, and see how resilience is essential for fulfilling the Great Commission. Whether the challenge is a natural disaster, allegations of misconduct, or a public relations crisis, leaders will leave equipped to safeguard their people, protect their mission, and remain prepared for every good work.

International Child/Youth Protection

Children deserve the same commitment to protection and care regardless of where ministry takes place. While the principles of safeguarding remain consistent, international environments introduce unique considerations including local legal frameworks, reporting expectations, partner oversight, volunteer screening, cultural differences, and the operational realities of short-term mission work. Sessions on this topic explore how churches, mission organizations, and sending teams can apply strong child and youth protection practices in international ministry settings. Participants will examine risk considerations specific to overseas work, identify common gaps in short-term mission environments, and discuss practical strategies for protecting children and strengthening organizational accountability. Designed for missionaries, mission agencies, church leaders, and short-term team leaders serving children and youth in international contexts.

International Security for Sending Teams

Mission teams are often well prepared for ministry but underprepared for the operational realities they may encounter overseas. Different legal systems, medical capabilities, communication challenges, and crisis response expectations can create risks that sending churches and agencies are not accustomed to navigating. Sessions on this topic provide a practical framework for international readiness built around stewardship, continuity, and care for team members. Participants will explore pre-deployment planning, communication practices, medical and emergency considerations, partner coordination, incident response, and post-trip reintegration. Designed for missions pastors, sending churches, missionaries, agency leaders, and short-term team leaders, this session helps ministries strengthen their ability to send teams well while remaining focused on the mission they have been called to accomplish.

One of the most important aspects of your ministry’s child safety program will have to do with the safeguarding principles built into your day-to-day operations. You’ll need to consider access control to children’s areas (including check-in/out procedures, visitor protocols, etc.) worker-to-child ratios, visibility, restroom and hygiene procedures, technology use policies, transportation policies, and more. You’ll also want to make sure not to overlook special events, offsite, and overnight activities which make your policies for a regular ministry day inadequate. Sessions in the topic will focus how to integrate good safeguarding measures into your ministry’s regular rhythms and procedures.

Child and youth safety is not optional—it is a calling. This course gives you the tools and confidence to start strong or strengthen what you already have. Whether you feel fully called, or simply willing, this work protects the vulnerable, builds trust, and reflects the heart of Jesus. Sessions on topic will help attendees to: Understand the role of a Child Safety Coordinator and why it matters to the mission of the Church; Identify the core responsibilities and practical steps to launch or strengthen that role at their church or organization; Gain tools and resources to start or refine a Child Protection Plan in their own ministry; Leave encouraged to do this work in God’s strength, not their own.

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Having a plan for how your organization would respond to a discovery of abuse is invaluable. Whether the abuse were to be perpetrated by someone within your organization or someone without, how you respond will impact the victim’s recovery, perpetrator’s sentence, and your organization’s reputation. We don’t like to think about the fact that one of our own could be abused in our care or that one of our own could be an abuser. But that is precisely why it is so vital to create and maintain an abuse response plan while heads are clear, and hearts are not burdened by the sorrow that comes when abuse is uncovered. Although we do everything in our power to protect kids and prevent abuse, on this side of heaven it still happens. You don’t want to be caught on your heels when faced with such a heavy, heartbreaking situation. Sessions in this topic would give guidance on how to build a response plan that works for you and your specific ministry context.

Responding to reports and allegations of abuse can be both an urgent and complex crisis for ministry leaders. Whether you are responding to an internal allegation or reporting abuse from outside your ministry, what you do next can have lasting effects on victims, employees & volunteers, on your congregation, as well as your own career and witness before a watching world. How to manage crisis response for churches and Christ-centered ministries is something worth considering beforehand. How and when should you report? How do you care for individuals impacted by abuse? How should you form and lead a crisis response team and who should that include? When and how should we notify parents, members, our congregation or other stakeholders? When do we need an attorney and how can my insurance company assist? Sessions related to this topic would be good for any ministry leader including administrators, pastors, directors, board members, and trustees.

In a sinful world, Christ is the only One who can bring peace. People who have been hurt by others wrestle with anger, shame, depression, among others. The church has an opportunity to display the gospel and promote God’s peace by caring for people well. This session aims to address emotions from a biblical perspective without minimizing sin and suffering. Practical suggestions for leaders and lay leaders are included.

Jesus always showed great love, mercy, & compassion for the broken, vulnerable, and wounded of this world. He invited all those who were weary and had heavy burdens to find rest for the souls in Him. Today, the church and all followers of Jesus have the same undeniable calling to reflect Christ’s heart and offer help, hope, and healing for survivors and their families of sexual abuse. Sessions on this topic will address how churches can respond with great care, compassion, and resources to provide a place where survivors are believed, supported, and safe—and where the love of Christ can restore what sin and silence have broken.

Mandatory reporting

In the course of your service in ministry, you’ve just learned of a possible case of child abuse.   What are your obligations?  The answer may vary widely depending on what you know, how you know it, and the capacity in which you serve as well as the laws of the place you are serving.  We’ll provide you with the tools you need to be prepared before you receive a report of potential child abuse, to know your privileges, rights, and obligations, and to respond in a way that protects yourself, your ministry, and those you serve.

Every year millions of kids go off to camp for a time to experience the outdoors with friends and be exposed to a different rhythm of life. For thousands of ministries, this is a great time to get away from the routines of life and to spend concentrated time together in fellowship, worshiping God, and learning from His Word. However, camps, retreats, and overnight activities are some of the most high risk ministry programs involving children and youth. Unfamiliar environments, access control complications beyond your control, sleeping arrangements, showering, changing, etc. all make child/youth safety at camps and overnight activities more complex than the day-to-day ministry that takes place in your building. However, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate risk and red/green flags to consider when choosing a camp/retreat for your ministry. Sessions on this topic help ministry leaders to think through some important considerations related to safety both in choosing a camps/retreats, and in internal procedures related to transportation, supervision, and more.

Jesus said we will know the good shepherds from the false prophets by their fruit. And the fruit is seen so clearly in people management and misconduct prevention. When we bring Biblical values of goodness to legal principles, we have the best chance of avoiding bitter and withered fruit within our ministry. Employment law and workplace structuring is more critical to the Kingdom and to good shepherding than most of us knew.